11 February 2013

At the beginning of February, West Ham Co-Owner David Sullivan confirmed that the Hammers 'have an agreement with Liverpool to sign Carroll at the end of the season'. Great news, right? In theory, yes, but it it all depends on how much money the Reds will make back on the striker. There's no way that the club will come close to recouping the initial £35m outlay (still can't believe that), and West Ham legend Julian Dicks has urged his old club not to pay through the nose for Carroll.

In an interview over the weekend, Dicks - who also made 24 appearances for Liverpool in the early 1990s - insisted that Carroll 'is right for West Ham', but refuted the suggestion he's worth any more than £12m. He observed:

“He [Carroll] gives you that option if you want to play direct and he knows where the goal is.

"He is not a prolific striker and the price has to be right. I don’t think they should pay more than £12m for him, given that he will be on around £80,000 a week"

If only someone at Liverpool had this thought-process in January 2011!

£12m for Carroll? Chance would be a fine thing. I doubt West Ham will offer any more than £10m for the striker, especially if he continues his West Ham goal average of one goal every 6.5 games.

After all, Daniel Sturridge - a far more prolific striker than Carroll - went for £12m, and Liverpool are not in a very strong bargaining position.

If Carroll did go for £12m, the Reds would make a 67% loss on the transfer.

A shocking waste of money, which would make the deal one of worst in Liverpool's transfer history.

We have a 17 million pound agreement "if" they stay up. They gave us 2 million for the loan..... Only Carroll has to agree terms with west ham..... Hopefully he does so we can spend more money in the summer.

he has a bloody point though, this dicks (what's in a name?). The only thing that could boost Carrol's value is the idea that he could have some sort of footballing epiphany- learn ball control and off the ball movement (his biggest weakness in my opinion) and get a bit of confidence. This would make him an altogether different proposition

12m!!!!! More than happy to get 12m for this flop..i would play a giraffe instead of him..what on earth he's playing..Still amazing whether KD seen him play before signing LFC flop of the history "carooool"..."Blind Transfer"

carolls better than what we got instead borinni now theres another complete waste of money,and as all kennys signing have vastly improved after another season at the club who knows what would have happened if he had stayed

JK you are wrong! The Carrol deal will go down in history as the worst in football...worldwide, ever. It made no logical sense, his style doesn't fit that of Liverpool. Were a pass and move/possession/attacking club, he is a Wimbledon, Bolton, Sunderland type player. When the Torres to Chelsea deal was on the table there was talk of Sturridge plus cash for Torres. If we could have got 40 million for Torres plus Sturridge, that would have been a coup for us. We would have had Sturridge and Suarez and 40 million in the bank...

Completely agree. I always thought the craziest deal in football ever was when Barca paid Inter 45 million + Eto for Ibrahimovic until we paid 35 million for Carroll. If we can do a straight swap for Ben Arfa, I would snap their hand off.

jaimie ,on another subject if we lose tonight(god forbid) we will be 9th yes 9th not a typing error.so with no cup runs as an excuse whats the problem and please dont say kennys signings as the ones that have been given a chance have out performed rodgers signing hands down (sturridge apart)

The moment he signed on the dotted line it was the worst transfer in not just Liverpool FC history... football history. But when you hear the voice of Comolli you can understand why it was so easy for teams to rape us financially.

But let's not forget who has brought out the absolute best in Steven Gerrard and adopted a defensive system that has given JC a new lease of life.

When we defended deep under Kenny, Rafa and Hodgson JC looked finished. Now that we look to play higher up the pitch and control games Carra all of a sudden is not exposed as he usually has been over the last 3 years.

Gerrard is now playing where he was as a kid. He is primarily a destroyer in the Roy Keane mould but possesses a complete arsenal. All season long Gerrard has controlled the midfield and has looked more tactically astute than at ANY other time in his entire career whilst playing central midfield.

If Gerrards form has improved due to a new found tactical awareness then no doubt so have all of Kenny's signings. BR deserves credit for that. Allen and Borini may or may not work....who knows? But I have this feeling Rodgers will not be playing it safe in the future by purely signing players he knows. Hopefully Coutinho will be the start of a very exciting transfer policy at Anfield.

I think Kenny's signings have played better under Rodgers than they did previously. Suarez is scoring more than he did last season? Enrique looks like a different player, Downing is...doing something, er...Henderson anyone? Also, just to point out that Borini and Sturridge combined cost about the same amount as Downing and between them have contributed more. In fact all of Rodgers' signings on average have given a better return on their value. You seem to forget that Kenny signed Carroll and Adam, so far only Borini out of all of Rodgers' signings hasn't really contributed but he's young, got injured and has time to improve.Also, have a bit more faith in the fact that we'll do well, we should win tonight and hopefully then you'll give the manager a little bit of praise ;)

Me along with one or two others on this site were going nuts asking "WHHHYYYYYYYYY?!" "AND FOR HOW MUCH!?????"

FSG paid the price for trying to prove they are not similar to our previous owners in terms of expenditure but more than matched them in stupidity! He was injured for three months when we signed him too. No transfer sanctioned by our owners has said "please like me LFC fans" as much as this one.

There is no 17m agreement. There is an agreement that we get 1st refusal but we are not tied in to that fee. Agree with Dicksy, anything above 10-12m he is just not worth it. Liverpool are in a crap position because he is on big money and they don't want him, they have to sell him in the summer. Expect that figure to be much lower than what the mickeys want

yes i will praise rodgers tonight if we can beat the mighty wba at home tonight,enrique looks like a different player he played well last season,and i think you will find most times 2 players will contribute more than one most of the time,by your same arguement henderson as contributed more than allen asaidi,and borini put together,if by cotributing you mean goals and assists

Carra & Gerrard has been really poor for three years. Three years is not a bad spell it's usually a permanent state of being. So to not credit BR could also be considered niave. (no offense taken or meant).

It's funny, you made the assumption that FSG had pulled the wool over my eyes because I had acknowledged what they had done for the club (Rescued the club from administration etc) however, you simply can't and won't accept the fact that Kenny screwed up royally last season with his transfers etc. No, WBA aren't mighty, but things take time and we can only compete against what's in front of us. Did you see that Man City (With all their millions) got completely turned over by Southampton? Thing is, Henderson had a far longer time to adjust to his surroundings and my point earlier was based on players contributions based on value. Allen made quite a good impact when he first arrived but has tailed off, Henderson has taken over a year to start putting in performances, Assaidi simply hasn't featured enough to comment on (when he has, he's played ok).

Kenny had a rough go last season, and it was only exacerbated because FSG saw an opportunity to oust a club legend. Did he deserve more time? Yes, probably. (I'm a firm believer that once Lucas was hurt last year at Chelsea, everything changed for us.)

But when was there ever going to be another opportunity like that to justify his ouster; we did have the 3rd worst record in the prem in the second half of the season, albeit with two great cup runs. Many results were unjust (due to lack of luck, the goal not being 2 inches higher and wider, etc.), but there was also a lack of killer instinct in last year's team. This year's killer instinct is Luis Suarez.

Furthermore, Rodgers is being given time (and rightfully so), but we still make too many BASIC mistakes (which have nothing to do with the system IMO), and I fear that lack of killer instinct rears its head too often still.

Admittedly it's been better, but I attribute that to LS playing like a man on fire, and Stevie being healthy. Now with Sturridge in the fold, I'm hoping that we can get another source of scoring, and it will create a domino effect from there.

While I agree that we wont get that much for him, I`m not into the logic of comparing the prices other footballers went for. Yes Sturridge only cost £12mil, but then again Michu only cost £2mil. So on the same logic hardly any player in Michus position should sell for more than £2mil.

Transfer fees are about what a club thinks the player is worth to them, and how much they want them, compared to how much the selling club needs to sell.

I would say if we got £15mil for him, that would be above what I would expect. Still a massive loss, but it always was going to be, as when you pay £35mil for a player, chances are you will always make a loss, unless you brought Messi.

assaidi has not played why rodgers signed him and kenny did make mistakes but rodgers has made as many so why should we give him time but not kenny,oh because in some peoples opinion hes a genius,and yes i did see southampton rout man city the game after we could only scrape a draw

You made some very valid points and I do agree to an extent about Kenny being ousted too quickly. What I feel as a bone of contention is whether buying Carroll was the right thing to do and also if any other manager would have gotten away with the exorbitant fee paid for him. I think its important we give whoever is in chance a fair crack and at the moment (bar a few inevitable slip ups) I haven't been too displeased with what Rodgers has done.

Whoa...Are you seriously going to compare what Kenny did to what is currently being done? Look, I understand you're upset about Kenny being booted but come on, be reasonable. Andy Carroll's acquisition will probably go down as the worst in our history, along with a couple of other faux pars during that period. At the end of the day what matters to any owner is success, both on the field and financial. We have been conservative with our spending this season in relation to last and we're in roughly the same position in the league arguably playing better football. If we fail to reach the Champions League again this season it will be a setback but not nearly as much as if we had spent over £100m

FSG was in a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation because Torres seemed to give in his transfer request so late in the period.

If they sold him and didn't bring in a replacement they'd be damned. If they sold him, other teams would be able to put their feet to the fire and try to hold out for as much money as possible (which is what Newcastle smartly did), and they'd be damned. Or we end up in a situation like this summer where we sold Andy and didn't bring in any replacement.Carroll was never going to live up to 35m. That type of money is reserved for an upper echelon of player of which AC is never going to be a part. Unfortunately, most fans seem to have the mindset that if a player is bought for a certain amount, that means he has to live up to that amount. Why can't anyone admit that a player is limited and we overpaid for him? It's not the player's fault we overpaid. It's the owners and management. But the player gets a major portion of the blame when he doesn't live up to the exaggerated expectations. I still believe Andy can be a nice player, and I admit that I would like to see him playing for us again next season. But he's never going to be a superstar. Potentially could be a nice piece to the puzzle.

Furthermore, I still don't fully understand what happened with the Torres situation. It seemed to me initially that he was just looking to take the money and run and go to a more talented team, while FSG threw out a high price thinking CFC would not match it. But then Torres has come out a few times in the last two years claiming that there's more to the story (even hinting that he was forced to leave). Admittedly, in the USA it can be difficult to find out certain information, even in the internet age. If someone could provide any more specific details, that would be great.

However, one could also make the argument that we could have taken the 35m spent on Carroll and made a quality purchase instead of a panic buy, which would have either made the team better or provided a player we could eventually sell for a lot more than 12m (which it sounds like is the price for Big Andy nowadays).

totally agree m8 rodgers has been blessed on the injuries front,also how would he have coped with a suarez ban like we had last season,i just think rodgers would have been better of at swansea for a couple more seasons

I didn't say better, I said similar. If you can't see any improvement in the club fair enough, I don't think it's worth going into. I have explained previously (on a few occasions) how I think improvements have been made but you seem absolutely adamant it's all doom and gloom which is a shame.

no you have tried to get me to except that there as been improvements,in your opinion ,but thats what it is your opinion,i did not realise that i had to agree with you or,i would be wrong,maybe you should take over the site then you can stop any comments that disagree with your points of view,as they are bad for the club and your word is law,in any future replys to you i will call you sir and just run my thoughts past you.just to see if theres any point in posting them because if you don,t think there right they must be wrong,so it will save me time in the long run

I think you are all very negative about a young player - who has all the potential in the world - and has been hampered by setbacks and injuries.No-one knows how he will perform with a good run of games? I honestly believe he could be the man to finally bring England the world cup, as he seems impossible to handle on the big stage. If he ever did, there would be a lot of people eating thier hats. ENGLANDS NUMBER 9 YNWA.

If anything Brendan Rodgers has got a real problem, the way he treated Carroll was shameless and not representative of the football club I have always loved. KK was right for LFC and the day they stopped wanting and trusting KK was a very bad day for the club. KK had a long term plan.Brendan seems excellent from a coaching point of view but I think he is not a good role model or spokesman for LFC. If anyhting Brendan should have come in as Coach under Kenny and learned a bit from the master before taking the leading role.YNWA KK

jase your wasting your time...rogers has eveyone kidded that we are barcelona on acid...we dominated more games last year and hit the post more ...plus lucas and suarez missed a shed load ..but this year ( even though we are out of both cups) we are better..also we are in the europa curtosy of kenny ...baffles me

People keep banging on about how many times we hit the woodwork last year... hitting the post is STILL MISSING!!!! This isn't Aussie Rules; you don't get points for not getting it through the sticks.

With regards to KK; yes he's a legend, but I was almost glad to see him go because of his excruciatingly embarrassing, arrogant and pathetic press conferences and interviews. Total lack of respect for anyone who had the temerity to ask him a decent question. Plus the LS T-shirt rubbish.